SUPREME COURT OPINIONS: Getting the Message

The true significance of policy articulations by appellate courts lies in the behavioral responses of relevant parties below. Actions consistent with the intent of appellate sources is dependant on effective communication between message source and message recipient. Limiting focus to the U.S. Supreme Court as an appellate source, two measures of effective communications are developed. These measures incorporate two dimensions of comprehension difficulty: message structure and the familiarity of the reader with constitutional language. The article also suggests 13 hypotheses pertaining to relative communicative success or failure, several of which are tested briefly.